A couple days ago IBM has announced the new IBM z/OS Platform for Apache Spark, and it is available March 25, 2016. More details are available here:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/apache-spark.html Also refer to the IBM announcement letter, available here: http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/7/897/ENUS216-067/ENUS216-067.PDF If you are a z/OS 2.1 (or higher) licensee, you can order this new, native z/OS version of Apache Spark at no additional charge. Yes, that's right, free in the common sense of the word at least. Order IBM program number 5655-AAB through Shopz if available in your country or via your other regular ordering system if not. If/when you need IBM Web and telephone technical support to open PMRs there is a (reasonable) fee for that, and you would order IBM program number 5655-AAC. But there's no time limit, Single Version Charge, or other such considerations. Just go grab Spark, then decide if/when you want IBM support. To run the IBM z/OS Platform for Apache Spark you will need a zEC12, zBC12, or a higher model machine. You will also need z/OS 2.1 or higher (one LPAR or z/VM guest anyway), the IBM 64-bit SDK for z/OS (Java Technology Edition, available at no additional charge), and the Bourne Again Shell (bash) available for download from Rocket Software at no additional charge. Precise release requirements are in the documentation. Apache Spark is an open source, in-memory processing engine designed for "Big Data" analytics. Data scientists and developers can use Scala, Python, and SQL with Apache Spark, as they prefer and in familiar ways, to access the rich collection of data sources available right on z/OS -- with efficiency, speed, security, reliability, etc. That includes VSAM, DB2, IMS DB, PDSEs...even SMF data. Platform components include the Apache Spark core, Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, Machine Learning Library, and Graphx. You can analyze data in place, cut down on data movement costs and complexity (and security risks), aggregate with other data stores, and even incorporate Spark analytics into workflows, transactions, and batch sequences on z/OS. I'm looking forward to hearing reports about your experiences with Apache Spark for z/OS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
